


Everything Hurts

by harrowmarrow



Series: Two Nights with a Revhead and Redhead [3]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-06-07
Packaged: 2018-04-03 06:01:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4089661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harrowmarrow/pseuds/harrowmarrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The War Rig is rumbling back towards Citadel and Nux and Capable have one more night before all hell breaks loose. The question is whether they can keep the mayhem from exploding early, right between them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything Hurts

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I figure it took them two days to get to the Plains of Silence, so plausibly we've got one more night to account for on the way back. And I'm going to drag that sucker out like it's the only two-headed lizard I've stomped on for days in the starving wastelands. That's right, this is just the first part of Night Three, and there were only supposed to be two in the first place. Ah well, at least now there's Toast.

Capable sits with Nux in the fresh air just behind the cab of the War Rig, their legs hooked over the fuel tank there. It is the dead of night and they are just coming through the sour land on their way back to the canyon, the ground under their wheels turning from slate black to dark red. The Rig is more heavily occupied now, with the Vuvalini posted at the front and back of the tanker. Talk and motion is muted, as if everyone knows they should try to sleep. But they aren’t getting very much. 

This is particularly true of Nux, who is presently playing with the broken top of a lighter, flicking sparks. A few moments earlier he had bent over Capable’s shoulder and without so much as a hum of warning cut a shock of hair from the end of her braid. He had turned it over in his fingers, like it was a strange new thing he could try to eat, or sew into his clothing somewhere, and then flipped the flint out of his pocket. He has been watching the thin strands burn down to his finger tips, brief lines of red and gold against the dark world beyond. 

Capable fingers the blunt edge of her braid, torn between startled hurt and fascination with the abrupt, bizarre creature he can be. The flashes of red put eerie shadows into his face, picking up the scars on his lips and deepening the shadows under his brows. 

His lips press, the flint clicking uselessly a few times before the next strand catches, and Capable realizes that she is unsettled. And that it is him. He is putting this nauseous feeling in her gut with his small game of flames and danger, the War Boys’ obsession with a blazing end shrunk down into miniature. Something about the way it captures his attention deadens his eyes, emptying them. He still hasn’t looked at her with any idea he invaded her space.

Her voice is hushed, but carries a note of defiance. “Are you afraid, do you get scared?”

Nux looks briefly to the horizon ahead, his brows pinching up. “I’ll get stirred up in a bit. Not yet.” 

The last few strands burn down in his fingers, and he brushes them away. His hands are only still for a moment, worrying at the edge of his pockets. She thinks she knows what they are itching for. A wheel. 

“You could have taken a bike, you know. The Mothers said you could.” 

Nux shivers, like he is shaking off a noose that slipped around his neck for a moment. “Nah, they’re all choked with sand.” Capable raises a skeptical brow. Nux’s heavy boots scuff along the rail, his arms hung over his knees with that pinched look again. “I know this Rig. She might need me here.” 

Capable digests this second attempt at giving a convincing reason, wondering if perhaps Furiosa isn’t the only one he means. If not, it would only make her nauseous feeling worse, for it happens to be his presence that balls her stomach up in a knot. How reassuring to see his face flicker into the gaping maw of a War Boy whenever the light hits him funny. A small piece of the army that is waiting to crush the breath from her body, jammed in right beside her. 

He’s been managing the task quite well on his own. Three times now. Three times she has gasped for air, the breath knocked out of her by his dick thudding up from below. Her lungs were fed instead by an urgent desire for life, the desperate need to welcome it.

But why did he do it? She is haunted by something he said the first time: _He’ll shred me_. That is why the look of a skull on his face is getting under her skin tonight, filling her with dismay. To think that her act of brave defiance might have been wrapped around a grunting War Boy still dreaming of death. That she might be just another way for him to burn out fast and violent. 

Nux’s hands flick over his pockets again, and this time they produce the round weight of a lance tip. He fiddles with the cord that would tie it to a lance. 

Capable stares at it. He had that in his _pocket?_ And how long has it been there? Sun’s sake, when she – when he – when his pants were bunched around his feet, hanging off his knees? She didn’t think they could actually explode in flames. What if they had accidentally – 

“Nux, could that thing really –“

“Not a good one, is it.” He glances at her with a lop-sided grimace, completely missing the point of her whisper. “Slit’s shit at facturing, I’ve got to fix them all the time. Here.”

Capable’s heart lurches into her throat as he takes her wrist and sets the bomb in her palm. She blinks owlishly, holding it carefully like it might go off any moment and she would really rather throw it off the Rig at once. A _faulty_ tip was pressed to his thigh the whole time – to _her_ thigh? 

“You keep it.” 

Capable swallows. Great. Yes. Where exactly is she going to keep it in her linens? And how comforting to know she might be blown to bloody pieces if her hip runs into the Rig the wrong way. 

“I knew that one was a dud, he bolted it on too tight. Slit. What a rusty scrap.” 

Capable breathes out, relieved. So it couldn’t go off.

“Fixed it, though.”

She sucks in again. “When did you do that? Just now, or …”

“When I got on the rig. Thought I might throw it under the wheels. Could have worked.” 

“It … could have …” 

Nux pauses, like something just scratched frantically at the back of his mind, and then his blue eyes swivel over to her, quickly running up and down her blank expression.

“Stalled on that, though. I’d just make more of a wreck of things, he’d already lost one of his ... one of you.”

“Angharad …”

“I’m scrap at lancing, anyway. Probably would have missed the rig, right below me. Glory, you know how soft I am.”

He hangs his head for a moment and then swipes a finger over the grey tip of his nose, ducking a glance at her to see if this has done any good. Capable’s grim stoicism has faltered, her fingers curling around the lance tip like it might be something important after all, even precious.

“You’re not soft though, are you? I mean, you must have been out on the road a long time, and you survived. You drive a pursuit vehicle, isn’t that what you said? Nux? And you got on the rig, didn’t you. Out of all those War Boys trying.” 

Capable gulps as his lean body hitches closer to her along the rail, his eerie pale face with its deep shadows sliding over her shoulder. Apparently he has judged his repair efforts to be a success. The ridges on his lips brush her shoulder and the lance tip slips in her sweaty palms.

“Yeah, shiny thing, that. Shiniest thing I’ve ever done, getting here.” 

His hand sinks in her hair, fiddling, and Capable really wishes he weren’t backing her up against the back of the Rig’s cab with this infernal shoddy bomb hugged in their middle. He is giving her hair the same hooded, reptilian look he trained on the burning strands earlier, and she knows it fits – they are burning too bright, too quick, a brief flash against the horror of the place they are racing back to. It is going to swallow them back up again, she can feel it.

Capable’s hands clasp around the back of his bulbous head, clinging to him. She wants to wrap her legs around his hard waist and the bulky buckles of his pants, desperately squeeze whatever treacherous, explosive treasures he might have stuffed in them – 

A sound scuffs above them and Nux jerks back, hanging his head around the corner of the tanker to escape the eyes of the old woman passing behind them. A little rattled by his graceless retreat, Capable returns the woman’s weary smile. A strong hand squeezes her shoulder.

“You alright here? I could take him with me if you want.”

Nux’s ear perks, but he doesn’t look back, as if all he can hear is the wind.

Capable shakes her head, but can’t deny the warm reassurance the older woman’s presence brings. And there is something Capable would like her to take – the lance tip. A burden would lift from her heart if she could pass it over into a pair of wise hands that know what to do with it. But she keeps quiet, the bomb leaking its acid terror into her lap, and the woman moves to climb up the back of the cab. 

“I’ll be right up here. Call if you need me.”

“I will.”

Nux scoots back to her at once, one of his long arms snaking around her waist and his face buried in her shoulder again. Capable isn’t so quick to return to that feeling, trying to gently stave him off.

“Nux. Nux. Is this really the shiniest thing, the shiniest thing you _could_ do –“

A humming groan comes from him, shared between the bones of their faces. “Valhalla yes, wet, warm –“

“Valhalla – right! I mean, is it? Or do you – do you still want to –“

“Want to ride there? Glory, yes, again –“ His teeth close over her ear, holding off from a full crunch. He knows how sensitive she is now. 

“No, not – not like that –“ His hands are sliding around her waist, pressing like he would tip her back right here, smother her with the flat warmth of his chest, shuddering like a starting engine. She wants nothing more than to hold tight to his strange, smooth body, lay back and let the stars fill her eyes – she squeezes them shut.

“Say you’re not going back to him. Nux. Say it won’t be the same. It can’t be. It can’t be.” Her dark mutters are only met by damp panting in her hair. 

“Immortan’s sun, I’m so revved I could –“

“Nux!” She grabs his floppy ears, dragging his blinking eyes before her own. They squint for a moment, trying to make out what she is getting at, why she is stopping them. Capable’s thumb presses over his lips, tears stinging in her eyes. When he is close, she can see what was done to his face, she can feel that it is really only soft skin and a hard, angular jaw shifting awkwardly in her hand. 

“Oh Mothers –“ She kisses him, but breaks it off the next moment, for she needs to hear his answer before they go any further. Before her fingers find his buckles again, or they rumble one more mile closer to the canyon and the waiting war parties. Nux hangs before her, muddled by her sudden stopping and starting. “Just tell me you’re not kami-crazy anymore, you don’t care about all that rotten smeg he spins –“

“I’m not, glory, I’m nothing but dust. Make me chrome again, make me shine …” His broken nose rubs her cheek like he can take some of the healthy glow from her skin. 

“Dust? No, you’re not –“

“You're right, I’m not, not yet – that’s beyond this world.” She grips him harder and he quiets, perhaps realizing at last that she’s trying to have a serious conversation. He seems absently puzzled by it, still poking his fingers in her braid like this grooming habit is more curious than his coming fate. He presses it to his lips, gently biting the cords of hair. 

Just as Capable is beginning to despair, he spits it out again, a finger tracing the curve of her cheek. A thrill shoots through her stomach – how can his touch do that, when he seems to only half understand what she is? It shouldn’t feel so good to swallow and imagine her throat is a powerful V8 piston, her jaw a chromed grill under his fingers. And he worships those things – everything about this is wrong. _Angharad_. She is not a thing. She is not divine either. 

But she is riveted by the War Boy’s close inspection, somehow reverent and indifferent at once – like she _were_ a wondrous machine. But it doesn’t feel like she is becoming less. It feels like she is being seen for the first time. How can that be? She is frightened she is betraying herself. Betraying Angharad. 

Capable’s hand slides across Nux’s chest, the hard planes and ridges of scars tingling her palm. It feels like a trespass, how strongly and endlessly she wants to rub him – he doesn’t belong to her. She didn’t know joy could feel like a deathly sickness, that her need to feel another’s body could have the tyrannical edge of a starving dog backed into a corner. It would frighten and repulse her if his smell of leather and guzzoline weren’t filling her nose, making her giddy. 

They are locked together, gripping each other so hard no lurch or sway of the War Rig can break it. Capable fights down a laugh ricocheting up in her ribs – this can't be any kind of betrayal, it is the key to life. She may be sick, starved, in nearly gut-wrenching pain at being so close to him, but it is the best thing she has ever felt, all she ever wants to feel from now on. _Everything hurts_ – yes! Let it hurt! 

Capable wrings Nux with such grappling urgency she leaves marks on his bare back. He scrunches them up against the back of Rig cab, Capable wrapping her legs around him. His stomach grinds against her, the rocking motion bunching his pants up around his waist and then pulling them down off his hips again, rolling the lance tip between them. His pockets and buckles bite into her soft thighs, the drag of rough material somehow both soothing and painfully exciting, wrenching her body open with a fierce ache. Not even the slam of his dick felt this good. As soon as she thinks it, her body goes numb. Mothers, if they did that now … 

She doesn’t care that another weathered face might appear over the top of the tanker at any moment. She doesn’t care that her neck is wet, slimed by the drool hanging off his lip. She just squeezes him as hard as she can, kneading the ridge of his bending back, and listens to his gasps grow harsh and broken. Nux pushes up on his palms, his face dipping over her. His eyes are pressed shut in their blackened hollows, his puffy lips twisted. Capable is just about to catch them, suck them, when they move in a rasping gulp.

“Glory I could die. Right here, let me die.” 

His shoulders are shaking, his hips still running against her, but Capable has gone cold beneath him. She brushes the hair back from her face with a faint breath. “What?”

His forehead plunks down on her own, swallowing back his rush of spit. “There is nothing more chrome, more legend than this …” He groans through gritted teeth, as if he can hardly stand to live through such a glorious moment and leave it unused, shivering with pent up energy. “I was spared for this, it must be, it must be – my time. What else could there be, what more could be coming. Nothing, nothing greater than this, glory, I could –“

His hand closes around the lance tip and Capable erupts, snatching the bomb and kicking him forcefully back. Nux thuds against the end of the tanker and nearly falls off the Rig, grabbing the rail at the last moment and narrowly escaping his boots getting caught in the wheels. He clings to the rail, catching his breath, before hauling himself back up.

He crouches before her, fully alert, his blue eyes darting between the lance tip in her hand and up at the cab, his possible escape. He looks every inch the War Boy now, and Capable’s pointy slippers push her closer to the cab, her heart pounding. But her fear quiets with a fond wince for the jerky scramble it took for him to get back on the Rig, relief sinking in that she didn't accidentally kill him herself. She panicked when he grabbed for the bomb, but he could have been scooping it out of the way to press his lanky body closer. 

He uncurls in a swift motion, and she throws out her hand.

“Stay there! Just – just stay there a moment. Nux.”

He slowly sinks back onto his heels, hiking up his baggy pants and watching her warily. “What was that for?” His thumb jerks down below the Rig. 

Capable casts about herself, turning the lance tip over in her lap. “Ah … you said I could keep it.” 

That came out rather lamely, but a look of comprehension comes over his face. He doesn’t seem surprised that a claim of possession could nearly get him killed. He cocks his head, even looking a little bit pleased. He did give it to her, after all.

“Glory, you could have just said.” He shakes his head in rueful amusement and swivels around beside her, sitting like he had been. 

“Ha ha, well. I’m a little stirred up I guess.” 

He accepts this without comment, putting an arm around her. Capable breathes carefully in the awkward silence that settles over them. 

“You wouldn’t really want to flame out in my arms, would you?” 

Nux shrugs, watching the darkly rolling landscape. “Pretty shiny place to get wrecked.”

“Mmm. I see.” Capable does not see. And Mothers, she just had a brutal demonstration of how important it is to have this straight. She won’t risk that panic again. “But why would you want to. Where do you think it will take you?” 

He watches the sloping hills change shape in the distance for a moment longer. “Nowhere. I’ll blow about like a bit of grit out here on the sand.” His arm lifts from around her, falling over his knee instead, gesturing to the empty desert. “No gates will open for me.” He peers at her over his shoulder. “Is that what you want?”

Ostensibly, he is asking about her question, but it starts to gather a blacker, more sinister meaning as the pause between them stretches. Capable’s throat squeezes shut. She does want him to say he isn’t eager for the Immortan’s Valhalla, but it suddenly sounds like she is wishing a worse fate upon him. The grey, wasted death he fears. 

Nux leans over to tug at something stuck to his boot. Capable’s mouth falls open – sun's sake, does he still not notice how much she needs this? Is he ignoring her now? He gives a shiver like something she can’t see touched him. His lips briefly open, then press to the side instead. 

Capable crosses her arms, her knee tapping, bouncing the lance tip in her lap. “What are they saying.” He gives a start. “Larry and Barry. What are they telling you.”

After a few glances at her and a great deal of grimacing, he settles on an acceptable summary. "Larry thinks a soft death is best, after all.” 

Capable blows out her breath. “Really? He said that?” 

“Well, he’s a soft smeg, so you can’t listen to him.”

“Oh.”

“He likes you, though. Glory be, he likes you a lot.” Nux’s mouth twists, and this time it is to keep a shy smile off his face, for Capable has drawn up her knees and tipped against him, quietly pleased.

“And what about Barry?”

Nux stalls, mid-cuddle, and Capable looks up at him, her eyes narrowing. "What did he say?”

“Figure he's got a screw loose or something, he’s gone kind of quiet.” He waits a beat. “You’ve got lots of mates.” 

Capable’s jaw slides to the side, tempted by this distraction – she would like to explain more about the girls, try to bring him into them more. He should know them. But the lance tip is heavy in her lap, and its reek of violence is seeping into her again, chilling her blood. 

“A loose screw?” 

“Yeah. He’s just rattling around, getting revved up.”

“That doesn’t sound quiet.”

"It's all empty roar, doesn't make much sense.” 

“Well what is it? What is he roaring?”

Nux seems to have gone a bit green around the gills, his stomach clamping into rock. Capable is mesmerized by it for a moment, thinking of sliding her hand in there again. She tunes back in to his rambling explanation, a look of horror slowly dawning on her face.

“– that would be the easy way, getting on the Big Foot, Erectus’ got that rotating cannon. But then, the People Eater’ll have his Benz-tanker, that's a shiny rig. If I got under that, punched a hole in her tank, I could take out four, maybe five vehicles. Glory, what a blaze that would be –“

“Stop, stop.” Capable can’t take any more, her heart wrung like a damp cloth that has one drop left in it. 

“It’s Barry, _he’s_ the one who –“

“You, Barry, it doesn't matter!” Capable’s head shakes, red hair flying over her face to hide her trembling chin. She hugs her knees tight, rocking. “No, no, you're not planning that. We’re going back to start a green place, a new green place of our own. You said this was hope. Hope.”

Nux looks at her with an earnest frown, his blue eyes clear and deep, but uncomprehending. “Hope for a green place. Sounds right. A new place for you.”

Capable stares at him through her shaggy mane, feeling helpless. _For you_. How can he say that without any surprise, any sadness, just like he was telling her how far it is to the canyon. 

“You should be stirred up about it, taking all that shiny stuff back from him.” His heavy boots bob on the rail. “I would be. Barry’s stirred up plenty, he hasn’t taken his foot off the guzz since we turned around back there.” 

“You mean he’s been talking about the war party this whole time?”

“They’ll all be after us – the Buick, Dodge, Cranky Frank. Slit’s probably got himself a new –“

“The _whole_ time? Even when we were …”

Nux rubs the back of his head, giving it an affectionate slap. “Yeah, he’d be legend –“

Capable has burst up and Nux only just manages to catch the lance tip bouncing from her lap. 

“Well that’s just … shiny! How chrome. Really. I’m so glad one of you is kami-crazy enough to die like a stupid smeg for that fool.” 

Nux hangs there with the tip in his hand, his knees wrapped around the rail of the War Rig, looking up at her in the moonlight. Or up at where she used to be, for she has hiked her linens around her legs and grabbed onto the back of the cab, hauling herself up and away from him.

Slowly Nux sticks the lance tip back in his pocket and slumps against the tanker, banging his head repeatedly against the heavy metal. His hands drag around the back of his skull to stop it, and he stays like that for a long time. 

********

Capable squeezes into the back seat of the cab where Cheedo is curled up asleep. She has never been more grateful to feel the girl close, to know the others will be with her at the end of this, or die trying to be. 

She thought she was afraid of all the death that could come the next day, but it would feel wild and free now just to think that each one would be resisted, fought against tooth and nail, a defiant declaration of their right to live, to break through. But Nux’s constant glances ahead aren’t searching for the Citadel. No, his look stops at the pass, at the place the war party will meet them. He can almost hear the roar of a hundred V8s, spitting sand into clouds of dust, the acrid stink of guzzoline. Those sights and sounds clamp into his skin like jumper cables, frying his blood to a boil.

It shouldn’t bother her. It only makes sense. But glory, it does.

She should never have wrapped her arms around him, looking for something new. What is new about this? Sitting here, trapped, waiting for things around her to die. She thought he was a sign of how much had changed. 

An uncomfortable thrill worms up in her gut – but what about the wet look in his eyes with his dick jammed in her from below? That was new. She didn’t know she could be filled up both ways, not just in her body, but her head, her heart. He seemed like a full life then, full of his own blood, and with enough of it to last a long time out on the sands. 

But she knows he isn’t. She knows what it meant that he was chained to the Fool.

She closes her eyes, her nose stinging. _Everything hurts_. She hates those words now, hates her pain, hates the distant wonder in the back of her head that couldn't care less for her fear and regret and would just like to know where he is. Get back there. Get back to the numbing freedom of rubbing and gasping, a little more at least. He’s not dead yet. 

Capable’s tears slow, worrying a finger in her teeth. But isn’t that wrong? To use him like a blood bag, injecting her with a shot of new life when she knows it will be hers alone, in the end. Every way she looks at it, taking him inside her _was_ like curling around that blasted lance tip. But then doesn’t he, at least, wish to be blown apart? 

“Capable.” It is a hiss from between her feet, Toast’s head poking up through the trap door in the floor. She keeps her voice hushed so as not to wake Cheedo. “Capable, I need you. That War Boy is driving me crazy.” 

Capable swipes a hand under her nose, staring grimly off at the wastes rushing by. What good would it do to see more of him?

“Capable!” Toast’s hand closes around Capable’s ankle, shaking her. “I’ve run out of ways to stop his nattering.” 

“What does he want?” Her voice is distant and Toast stares up at her with a crinkled look that can’t believe Capable is playing this stupid game too. Wasting time, _her_ time, when they don’t have any. 

“To never sleep again, apparently. Gods, it’s the engine, the lances, every scrap he knows about smeg-stinking tankers. And his bloody mates, they’re worse than he is –“

“Larry and Barry?”

Toast stares at her with a look of accusing boredom, her jaw slack. “Whatever.”

“They’re his lumps.” 

Toast’s nose scrunches. “Wow, okay. I did not need to know that.”

She cuts off Capable’s protest with a quick wave of her hand. “Look, I’ve already told him everything I can think of, it’s not working anymore. What you eat, what you read, your refusal to bathe regularly –“

"What?" It is a small gasp, ignored by Toast.

“Those stupid things you stitch –“

“My star quilts? Toast! You _didn’t_ –“ Capable gulps it back as Toast’s lips settle in a sour line beneath her withering glare, as if to say, ‘Why the fuck else do you think I’m here right now?’

“He didn’t get the point of it, but who does.”

“Didn’t you tell him about the stories they tell?” Toast gives her a deliberately blank look and Capable bristles. “Oh my sun, Toast, you did not tell him I stitch stars into things for no reason. You didn’t!” Capable sinks back with a noise of muffled rage, a hand propped over her mouth. “Fine. I gave you the book on constellations so you’d get it, but fine. Now he thinks I’m a dirty, stitch-happy sun-sick. Who cares.” 

Toast’s brow is firmly arched. “Who _does_ care?” 

Capable mutters darkly into the cuff tied at her wrist. “I don’t know why you like satellites so much, with their lost stories. When we _know_ the ones the stars tell –“

“It’s better not to know. It lets us dream what we like –“

“And what is that?” It is raw, trembling, and they both know they are talking about a great deal more than satellites and stars. “Why can’t we use the old things to help us.” 

“Because the old things are broken.” Toast hugs her arms across her chest, her jaw jutting. “Like that War Boy. He’s got nothing but revving and crashing and killing left in him. He knows it – he can only talk of the road. I’m sick of it.” 

Capable stiffens, looking like she might burst up and run somewhere – to her War Boy, perhaps, or as far away from him as she can manage. Toast can’t tell. All she knows is that Capable has gone white as a ghost. Toast drops her chin, weighing something, and her voice softens, grudging. 

“ … and you. He’s a broken scanner on that too.” 

Capable turns so her loose braid will hide her sudden flush. But she finds it impossible not to ask. "What did he say?”

Toast blows out a long sigh. “Mostly that you’re shiny.” She does an impression, widening her eyes and waggling her head back and forth. “’She’s so shiny,’ ‘Glory be, she’s _so_ shiny –‘” 

Capable shoves Toast’s shoulder, crumpling over a desperate laugh that winds her like a punch to the gut. Toast tries not to smile, but Capable’s giggles have an edge of madness that gets under the skin and makes them infectious. Soon she pops, digging her hands into Capable’s sides to make her squirm. 

“You raunchy stargazer, what did you tell that pup, that you’d take him to Valhalla yourself?” 

“Oh sun Toast, stop, that’s - that's so wrong –“

“How many _constellations_ have you shown him?”

“ _Toast!_ ”

Their bodies shake, temporarily hollowed out by laughter. It feels so good for their ribs to be scraped clean and breathless, unable to suck in enough air to feed their dread. Toast wraps her hand around Capable’s head and draws her into the greeting the Valkyrie gave Furiosa on the sands. "Look. He’s doing what he can. I know that. We all are. But I can’t take his nipping any more. If you could just …” She releases Capable so she can roll her eyes. “Come pet him or something, I don’t know. It’d be better for everyone if he gets some sleep.” 

Clearly, it would be better for Toast. She disappears down the hatch.


End file.
